(Above) Alastor Sanders of Petersburg, Illinois, works on his chemistry studies with Senetta Bancroft, associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Sciences and School of Education. (Below) Bancroft discusses chemistry with students. (Photos by Russell Bailey)
May 12, 2025
SIU researchers study ways to improve how all students learn chemistry
CARBONDALE, Ill. — Southern Illinois University Carbondale researcher Senetta Bancroft’s study into whether a differently structured chemistry class will benefit all students was inspired by a spring 2017 semester that left her disillusioned.
“The course didn’t go well,” said Bancroft, who has cross appointments as an associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Sciences and School of Education. “There was a 33% failure/withdrawal rate, and many of those who passed got a ‘C.’ This was very unacceptable. But in talking with the students, I discovered that they were trying. They were reading the textbooks and trying to study. Quite a few were showing up for office hours, too. But many of them had little or no high school chemistry, and they simply weren’t prepared for college chemistry. On top of that, they had other classes, and many were working 20-30 hours a week. It was just too much. But I desperately wanted to do something to help them learn chemistry and succeed.”
Science is often taught in a traditional “passive” classroom model, Bancroft said. Faculty members lecture as students take notes and then complete homework assignments outside the classroom; testing follows. Bancroft was curious about the flipped classroom teaching model, in which students learn new content outside of class through videos, assignments and readings and use classroom time for more active and guided learning, higher-level thinking and interaction with instructors and one another. She had heard of its success in grades K-12 and began studying research about its use in collegiate chemistry classrooms.
“I wanted to make sure it would help underserved students,” said Bancroft, whose background includes work in diversity and inclusion. “Reading in the journals and looking at the data, I wondered if would translate and help diverse, low-income students of color. I suspected the impact on their learning would be different, and indeed my research found there was a learning gap. And if it isn’t going to help all students, what is the point?”
Fast forward to today. Bancroft and two of her SIU colleagues have secured a $399,000 National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Grant to seek the answer to that question.
Multi-purpose project
Working with Bancroft on the three-year collaborative project, which launched this spring, are Heidi Bacon, associate professor of language, literacies and culture in the curriculum and instruction program, and Jennifer Koran, professor of quantitative methods in the School of Education.
“We have to understand that all students aren’t the same and figure out how to close the gap,” Bancroft said. “We want to figure out how to make it work as well for all student populations and what can be done to modify the design to be more effective for diverse groups. Diversity is baked into our design principles for this study so we can see what works and what doesn’t.”
Bacon said the study has three goals:
- Develop a framework of essential design principles for flipped instruction in undergraduate chemistry courses.
- Create and test a psychometric instrument to measure students’ perceptions and valuations of these design principles.
- Investigate differences in how students perceive and value the essential design principles relative to the different groups they are part of, including their race/ethnicity, sex and income.
“The purpose of the project is to establish and measure student perceptions of the fundamental design principles of inclusive and effective flipped undergraduate gateway chemistry courses,” Bacon said.
Data coming from multiple sources
Four quite diverse universities across the country, including intensive research and teaching institutions as well as historically black colleges or universities, are assisting SIU with the project.
“We are interviewing students within many flipped chemistry courses at these universities and using their insight to understand what matters to different types of students,” Koran said. “These insights will guide faculty members and researchers to adjust chemistry instruction and improve impact on the students. It’s really an amazing research project in terms of the impact it can have on understanding student learning.”
Bancroft said the goal is to make it easy for a faculty member from any university to understand how students perceive the flipped course, no matter how diverse their student population is.
Unique in many ways
SIU’s research team said this project is unique for many reasons. An interdisciplinary team is handling the project, and all three principal researchers have used the flipped classroom model.
Bacon said it is also quite sophisticated in that it included survey data and incorporates qualitative interviewing to develop a psychometric instrument which in turn will be used for student assessments.
Although the study is in the preliminary stages, researchers are making intriguing discoveries.
For instance, Bancroft said, when assignments are given out of class, if there aren’t specific deadlines, students tend to not complete them.
“There must be accountability,” she said.
However, she said that hard and fast quick deadlines may be difficult for women with lower incomes. She speculated that at times this population may be juggling life responsibilities and could benefit from flexibility.